On this day in 1919 Eamon De Valera, assisted by Michael Collins, made a daring escape from Lincoln Prison in Lincolnshire England. Like some bizarre cartoonish cliché, the mission was accomplished using a copied key smuggled in a cake! Incarcerated alongside the Long Fellow Dev were Seán McGarry and Seán Milroy. They were falsely accused of conspiring with the Germans against the British Empire. This was also part of a general roundup of any and all Sinn Fein members. This imprisonment of three important party members and the leader crippled the ambitions of Irish independence.
The Big Fella Collins was tasked with initiating a jailbreak from a foreign enemy soil whilst keeping himself and his allies out of English clutches. Cue a montage of innovation and frustration whilst the greatest minds of Eire tried several different, fruitless schemes. The eventual masterplan involved 4 parts.
Step 1. Dev used his position as a Catholic mass celebrant in the jail to make a mold of the Chaplin’s key using candle wax. This proved easier said than done, the first two didn’t fit but the third time was a charm. This mold was smuggled out to the Big Fella.
Step 2. A cake, substantial enough to conceal a large prison key but not too large to attract suspicion, was baked and delivered to Dev in Lincoln Prison. Sadly history does not see fit to record the flavour!
Step 3. At approximately 7:40pm on 3rd February 1919 the Long Fellow, McGarry, and Milroy liberate themselves from their cells using the key. They cheekily relock them which bought them valuable time concealing their absence. The fugitives then covertly made their way to the prison exercise yard, dodging the staffing spotlights to the tune of the Mission Impossible theme (probably). Awaiting them were The Big Fella, Harry Boland, and Frank Kelly.
Step 4. Under cover of darkness, vaulting the back walls, back alleys, and back gardens of Lincolnshire like lockdown party-goers escaping a Garda raid, they reached the Adam and Eve Pub. Here a taxi spirited them away to a safe house in Manchester.
In 1950 Dev returned to the scene of the crime 31 years later, no longer an escapee but a Taoiseach. Treated as a head of State he was given a tour of the prison and over a formal dinner, explained to the governor how he had escaped his “hospitality” back in 1919.
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